The World’s First Facebook Film

Last month, on a blistery winter night during Chanuka, nine Aaron Cohens met at a table in the back corner of Katz’s Deli for some pastrami, pickles and beer. There were two students (one med, one urban studies), a WNYC radio producer, a freelance TV writer, a digital artist and a rapper, also known as MC AC. They were introduced to each other by another Aaron Cohen, a 41-year-old Internet entrepreneur–turned–filmmaker. After serving as CEO of MenuPages for the past year and selling the popular restaurant-information site to New Yorkmagazine this summer, he began friending Aaron Cohens on Facebook and coaxing them into participating in his documentary, tentatively titled The Aaron Cohens. The Katz’s event was their first meeting.

“This is Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, and, this is Aaron,” Mr. Cohen said, patting the back of one bespectacled Aaron Cohen, who hadn’t taken off his coat yet.

Another Aaron Cohen, a 24-year-old videographer from Philadelphia, was recording as Mr. Cohen, the Internet entrepreneur, interviewed each of his guests, asking questions about their Jewish heritage, Bar Mitzvah themes and relationships with women—especially their moms. One admitted he hadn’t kissed a girl until two weeks before his high-school graduation. Another said his mother told him to call as soon as he was done with his interview, to let her know how it went. MC AC, a dirty-blond in a dark hoodie, is called Maz Gan—Hebrew for air-conditioning—by his friends. He broke out a freestyle rap: “I got the kids singing, Aaron Cohen he’s our hero, taking the rap game back to ground zero.”

“There’s 1,187 Aaron Cohens in the world,” Mr. Cohen, the Internet entrepreneur, said, saying he came up with the number by researching social networking sites and White Page listings. “We’re going to try to meet all of them.”

Mr. Cohen, who has salt-and-pepper hair and a wily grin, got the idea for the film about 10 years ago, when he was living on the Upper West Side. “I looked up my name in the phone book and there were eight Aaron Cohens living between 72nd Street and 96th Street, just on the Upper West Side, you know, just between West End Avenue and Central Park West,” Mr. Cohen explained on a frigid afternoon last week. He was at Katz’s again, getting his pastrami fix, along with his director of photography (full name: Aaron Thomas Fisher-Cohen), who was setting up a camera to document this Observer interview. “I thought it’d be so cool to just meet those Aaron Cohens and make a film about it called ‘My Dinner With Aaron Cohen.’ But then the Internet took off.”

And it took him with it! Mr. Cohen, a Washington, D.C., native, has held chief executive positions at several Web-based start-ups in New York. In 1995, he started selling advertising for Icon CMT, a New Jersey–based Web hosting and IT consulting business. (His boss was Shawn Gold, who went on to serve a stint as MySpace’s senior V.P. of marketing.) In 1996, he started business school at Columbia and co-founded both Concrete Media and Bolt.com, one of the first social networking sites. He finished his M.B.A. in 1998 and served as Bolt’s CEO from 2003 through 2007, until he became CEO of MenuPages last January, and negotiated the sale to New York in July.

“I’ve been an Internet executive my whole life, my whole career, and I love the Internet,” Mr. Cohen explained to TheObserver last week. “But I think I was searching to do something a little bit different. And I just, I’m 42, 41, I’m going through whatever midlife crisis I’m going through. So it’s about searching for Aaron Cohen through meeting other Aaron Cohens.’”

“And by doing so, he meets himself,” said Mr. Fisher-Cohen, poking his head from behind his camera. He has a mop of dark brown curls and quips with Mr. Cohen in tandem. “Aaron keeps saying that a good Jewish film hasn’t been made since Woody Allen slept with his stepdaughter.”

“Dude, don’t butcher my material,” Mr. Cohen interrupted. “The line is: When Woody Allen started sleeping with his stepdaughter, nobody made another good Jewish comedy again. … Our ambition, our hope, we’re first and foremost about making people laugh.”

Mr. Fisher-Cohen was skeptical about the film when Mr. Cohen messaged him through Facebook a few months ago. But on Dec. 22, at the first round table of Aaron Cohens at Katz’s, he saw the potential of the project. “When I met these guys, I really saw where this film could go,” he said. “It’s bringing together this group of very honest, nervous characters.”

A 30-year-old freelance TV writer named Aaron Cohen, who has worked for NBC and currently writes for a boxing show called 24/7 on HBO, came from his Upper West Side home to meet the guys who share his name at Katz’s that night. “As much as you look in the mirror every morning and say you’re the only Aaron Cohen, you know there are more out there … and these guys, they all sort of made sense as Aaron Cohens,” he told the Observer over the phone. “You’d think that, like, you might be like offended or slighted or taken aback that somebody has your name. But it wasn’t like that. After sitting and bullshitting for a while, you realize you have a lot in common.”